Page 21 of The Secret of Secrets

No shit!

Faukman sat numbly at his chair as the kid’s footsteps receded down the empty hallway. “I need those files, Alex!” he called after him. “My author entrusted me with a year’s worth of her work!”

Throughout the night in London, Mr. Finch had been monitoring a changing landscape.

First had been Brigita Gessner. The neuroscientist had sent Finch a deeply troubling message about Katherine Solomon’s manuscript and then had seemingly evaporated. Total radio silence.

Second had been Katherine Solomon herself. Thirty-five minutes earlier in Prague, Solomon had done something so unexpected that it could not be ignored. Immediate action had been required.

Finch had considered alerting his superior in the U.S., but it was the middle of the night there, and they had given him “unilateral operative control” to make strategic decisions. His superiors’ positions of power also required plausible deniability from operations that were ethically ambiguous.

Operations like this one, Finch thought, knowing his colleagues preferred not to know how Finch achieved his results.

And so, within minutes of learning of Solomon’s actions, he had followed his instincts and pulled the trigger, transmitting two words into the field.

Execute now.

The order had been confirmed by his contacts standing by in Prague and New York City.

Chapter 12

“Is this the woman you saw?” Captain Janáček demanded, holding up a computer tablet. The screen showed a grainy video capture of the woman with black spines encircling her head and carrying a spear.

Janáček and Attaché Harris were seated facing Langdon in front of the fire.

“Yes, that’s her,” Langdon replied, recalling his panic.

“According to the surveillance videos,” Janáček said, “you were on the bridge, you passed this woman halfway across, stopped to speak to her, and then suddenly ran back here and evacuated the hotel. What did this woman say to you?”

“Nothing,” Langdon replied. “She ignored me and kept walking.”

“She said nothing?” Janáček laughed. “Professor, if she said nothing…what made you panic?”

Harris looked equally confused.

“She was wearing that unusual spiked headpiece…and carrying a spear,” Langdon said. “There was also a very strong…smell.” Langdon immediately realized how strange this sounded.

The captain raised his eyebrows. “You did not like her smell? So you ran away?”

“She smelled of…death.”

Janáček stared at him. “Death? And what exactly does death smell like?”

“I don’t know…decay, sulfur, rot…It’s a complicated—”

“Professor Langdon!” Janáček barked. “How did you know this building needed to be evacuated?!”

“Captain,” Harris intervened. “Perhaps we can give Mr. Langdon a moment to explain himself?”

Janáček drummed his pen against his notepad, never breaking eye contact.

Langdon took a deep breath. Here goes nothing.

“Last night,” he began, his tone as matter-of-fact as possible, “my colleague Katherine Solomon gave a lecture at Prague Castle. Afterward, she and I returned to this hotel and had a drink in the bar downstairs. We were joined by a well-known Czech neuroscientist—Dr. Brigita Gessner—who was instrumental in inviting Katherine to Prague. Dr. Gessner insisted Katherine try the local Bohemian absinthe, which she did, and it caused a restless night’s sleep.”

Janáček took notes. “Continue.”

“At some point, around one thirty a.m.,” Langdon continued, “Katherine awoke in a panic from a nightmare. She was extremely upset. I brought her out to this room, sat her down by the fire, made some tea, let her get her bearings, and then, when she calmed down, we both went back to bed.”